


two rings shy

by bonsai_clipper



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Phone Call, banri is alone :-(, oh my god he slept on his roommate's bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 09:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25847671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonsai_clipper/pseuds/bonsai_clipper
Summary: juza doesn't sleep in their room that night, and banri thinks it's too quiet without him
Relationships: Hyoudou Juuza/Settsu Banri
Comments: 3
Kudos: 71





	two rings shy

Unfortunately having no choice but to put up with Hyodo's bullcrap on a nightly basis, Banri knows more than anyone just how loud Hyodo can be every time he snores. At some point, Banri's body subconsciously learned how to doze off without feeling the constant urge to punch Hyodo's loud mouth to shut it close, and Banri doesn't want to know how he managed to lengthen the lifespan of his nonexistent patience.

All he wants is one night where things are finally quiet enough for a good sleep. That ultimately boils down to two things—either Hyodo sleeps anywhere other than their room or he pulls an all-nighter, which is highly unlikely. Making Hyodo sleep without snoring should not be an option, Banri learns the hard way that it's physically impossible.

A peaceful night merely remains as Banri's wishful thinking, at least until one time during dinner. Hyodo offhandedly mentions something about leaving early on a weekend for an acting seminar. Banri doesn't catch most of the details nor does he choose to show interest, all he manages to pick up from the conversation is the venue being least three hours away by drive, and Hyodo wouldn't be able to arrive back to the dorm until the wee hours of the morning.

It is at that moment Banri's attention focuses on what Hyodo is saying, dawning to the realization that he is finally given his first and possibly only chance for a restful sleep. He mentally reminds himself to make the most out of this opportunity.

The day of Hyodo's acting seminar arrives, and Banri has honestly never been so glad about spending his day however he wanted. Hyodo isn't there for him to constantly pick on for his irritating habits, Hyodo isn't there to effortlessly rile him up for the most stupid reasons, Hyodo isn't there for his sole presence to fucking annoy Banri to no end. It's liberating, he thinks.

Nighttime rolls in. When Banri lays down on his bed, under the assumption that he can get actual sleep for once, he closes his eyes and in the back of his mind he admits that not hearing Hyodo's snores is sort of unsettling. He shrugs away the feeling and forces himself to sleep, but a few hours pass and he is still awake. It's too quiet without Hyodo. 

His phone rings beside his pillow, and Banri clicks his tongue in mild irritation. He never sets alarms, so he immediately assumes that it is a phone call. Heaving a sigh, he begrudgingly extends his hand to the source of vibrations, wondering why someone would think it is a good idea to make a phone call in the middle of the night. He squints his eyes as he grabs his phone, momentarily blinded by the brightness of the screen, before making out the user ID.

Banri's eyes widen in surprise. Why is Hyodo still awake? Why is Hyodo calling? He fails to answer his own questions. Hyodo isn't the type to initiate calls, and it's way beyond Hyodo's bedtime. He has a sleep routine like an old man, normally he would be knocked out by now.

Normally, he waits for six rings to pass on an incoming phone call before he picks it up. Banri makes an exception for this, immediately swiping his screen to answer after just four rings. Banri instantly gets up from his bed and fixes his posture, stealing one last look to the user ID to make sure it is actually Hyodo before he brings the phone to his left ear. "Hyodo, why the hell?"

"Why the hell what." Hyodo responds flatly, his voice on Banri's speakers a bit too soft for his liking. Banri does not answer right away, pressing his upper volume button a few times before he is satisfied. "Why the hell," he repeats stupidly after, ignoring the fact that Hyodo already heard him the first time. "Why'd you call, I could've been sleeping now!"

"Sleeping my ass." Hyodo huffs. "You won't answer this fast if you weren't awake. Can't sleep?"

Banri bites on his inner lip, regretting his choice of picking up the phone call more quickly than usual. Is he that obvious? He evades the question, tossing the flow of the conversation back to Hyodo. "Answer my question first, idiot."

"What question?"

"I literally just said it." Banri mutters under his breath, then sighs in exasperation. "Why did you call this late?"

"Ah, about that..." he pauses, and Banri hears a yawn from the other line. "Omi-san said I can tell what happened in the seminar when we're finished. Figured I'd tell you first."

"Are you dumb? He didn't mean right after you were done!" Banri hisses, his tone hiding away the tiniest hints of him feeling touched from Hyodo reaching out to him first, even though Banri knows there's no particular meaning behind the gesture. "You don't need to rush, he obviously meant when you come home..." Banri trails off.

Home.

It's already a given that the both of them considered Mankai as a home they could go back to anytime. Everybody else in Mankai would say the same thing—that's how much the company changed them for the better. Banri doesn't know if it is just him being overly paranoid right now, but he has this feeling that there is something oddly intimate about telling someone to come home, to Hyodo in particular. It's as if the implications are completely different—kind of like he isn't talking about Mankai, but an entirely different home, with just the two of them and no one else.

Is he just overthinking?

"You're probably right." Hyodo mumbles softly, tone laced with an unspoken apology. "Then I'll end the call now. My bad for calling you, good ni-"

"No, don't." Banri hastily cuts Hyodo off before he even gets to finish his sentence, and in the back of his mind he screams at himself for refusing so impulsively. He absentmindedly spouts the first excuse that formulates in his mind, "It's too late to do that. You already disturbed me, don't put the phone down as if nothing happened."

"...Fine." Hyodo doesn't sound the least bit convinced. "Before I forget, I just wanna let you know that I've bought what everyone asked for."

"You also got the california rolls, then?" Banri can't help but grin from the notion. "Sweet."

"Why would I buy them for you? Go get your own, Settsu." Hyodo snarls, and the corners of Banri's lips curl down to a pout, groaning as he plops back to his bed. He mumbles, "You've got to be kidding me."

"I'm not."

"You said you got everyone's requests! Am I not part of everyone?"

"Stop whining."

Banri merely grumbles something incoherent under his breath. Neither of the two takes the initiative to continue the flow of the conversation, so now the currents inevitably stand still.

Nobody speaks up.

The line goes completely quiet, save for the background noise on Hyodo's side, along with his slow, rhythmic breathings that Banri instinctively fixes his attention on. It slightly does its job of soothing his nerves from the awkward silence forming between them, the atmosphere starting to get heavier from the weight of their unspoken thoughts. It then occurs to Banri that maybe he should've just let Hyodo end the call earlier, because this wouldn't happen if he didn't open his damn mouth.

The responsibility of breaking the silence falls upon Hyodo. "The seminar..."

Banri perks up from the mention of the seminar, humming as if to tell Hyodo he is listening. He shifts to a more comfortable position, turning to the side and curls up as he pulls the blanket up to his chest. "Yeah?"

"It gave me a chance to interact with actors I haven't met yet. I learned a lot, but..."

"But?" Banri prods, and deep down he has a nagging feeling that he knows what Hyodo is about to say.

"The seminar reminded me of how incapable I am." Hyodo whispers sadly. "They all have something that make their acting look effortless even without practice, a skill I want to have... I always get my hopes up whenever I think I improved, then I remember how much better everyone is. It's frustrating."

His voice is growing strained, and at that moment Banri tries to visualize how Hyodo will look like if they are speaking to each other face-to-face, how his shoulders would hunch further downwards, how his eyebrows would dig deeper into his wrinkled forehead, how his jaw would firmly clench every time he stops speaking.

A funny feeling develops in his chest from the image—he refuses to put a name onto it. It is the exact same feeling Banri gets every time Hyodo brings himself down. Hyodo turns into a vulnerable mess, and no matter how much his self-depreciation annoys Banri to no end, he knows that knocking some sense into Hyodo wouldn't always work. The least Banri could do is to understand, even if he regrettably lacks the experience of being treated as such, which makes him unable to put himself in Hyodo's shoes.

"I really hate to say this, but if you are in the seminar with me right now, you'd breeze through the challenges." Hyodo reluctantly admits. "Just thinking about knowing exactly how you will do fucking pisses me off."

Hyodo isn't mad at Banri for being better than him, but at himself for not being able to meet the standards he set for his own goals, and Banri doesn't need an explanation to realize that Hyodo is being hard at himself. Even while knowing that, Banri can't help but feel a sharp pang right to his heart, as if Hyodo's anger is directed to him—it's not like he had the option to be born this way, to be good at something right off the bat... it just so happened that he is capable. This isn't a matter so simple that he could control. Things become way they are for a reason, and yet Banri still doesn't know why he turned out like this.

No matter how many times Banri taunts Hyodo on being a shitty actor, Banri could list down reasons off the top of his head why Hyodo's acting is extraordinary in its own right. The idea of Hyodo acknowledging how much inferior he is compared to everybody else doesn't sit well with Banri.

Banri is not liking this one bit. He is starting to get emotional just from a simple conversation over the phone, how much worse could it be if Hyodo is actually with him right now?

There is something about the early hours of the day that made Banri's judgment severely impaired, all he could think of is how he is already more than willing to express how he truly feels, something he wouldn't normally dare to do. This can't end up like his past attempts.

"Hyodo, listen carefully. I am not going to repeat myself." Banri starts slowly, emphasizing every syllable with a tone of finality. "You're so much more than you believe. Stop looking down on yourself for once, it's fucking annoying. I wouldn't bother staying in Mankai if it weren't for you, and I don't have to explain why because I'm pretty sure you know the reason behind it. It takes a lot to make me fired up about something, and you managed to do that way too easily. That alone says a lot about how much your way of acting affected me. Know your worth."

"Like what you said about everybody in the seminar, you also have something to be proud of. You're perfectly fine the way you are. Don't change..." he pauses, realizing at some point that he probably rambled a bit too much for his liking. He clears his throat to fill in the gaps of the occurring silence, "...you get it now don't you, Hyodo?"

He is only met with total silence from the other line. "Hyodo?" Banri repeats expectantly. Still no response.

Banri bites his inner lip from the lack of reaction. There is no way Hyodo haven't heard a single word, Banri thinks. He's absolutely sure that Hyodo got to listen to what he has to say without any disturbances, or at least that's what Banri is secretly hoping for, because no matter how many times he will assure himself, he still has no way of knowing what is happening in the other line.

His phone screen lights up, the screen telling him that the call has been ended, switching back to his lock screen.

Banri stares at his phone screen, wide-eyed. He is positive that it isn't him who ended the call. What.

Is it Hyodo?

He did all that, and yet Hyodo had the fucking audacity to end the phone call without saying a word. Fists clenching, his blood instantly boils as it dawns to him, seeing red even in the midst of the darkness.

"You shithead!" Banri whisper-shouts in anger, attempting to be mindful of his volume despite everything. He instinctively grabs a pillow within his reach, chucking it across the room towards Hyodo's bed. The pillow lands perfectly on where Hyodo's head is supposed to be—Banri has done this so many times whenever Hyodo gets into his nerves that it became a habit, he momentarily forgot that the current source of his anger isn't present.

If only Banri knew that this was going to happen again, he should've just kept his mouth shut.

Shaky from anger, he consciously keeps his breathing steady to regain his composure as he collapses to his bed. He fixes his gaze onto the ceiling, unfocused. Hyodo is such an idiot. Hyodo missed yet another chance to appreciate how much he means to him. He attempts to convince himself that Hyodo is the fool here, when in reality Banri is more of a fool for believing that Hyodo will take him seriously in other matters that didn't involve the theater.

He blankly stares at the ceiling. It feels uncomfortable not having his pillow.

Reluctantly, he drags himself to Hyodo's bed to take the pillow he threw earlier, contemplating on how he shouldn't blame Hyodo for reacting that way. If anything, it is Banri's fault for suddenly saying all that without thinking of the consequences—he is only supposed to keep it all in as he originally intended. Banri should've learned the hard way from his past attempts of doing the same thing, particularly to Hyodo... there is always some sort of interruption, it's as if Banri isn't meant to be acknowledged, to be understood, to be seen as an equal by him.

Banri releases a long yawn as he plops onto the bed, his frustration wearing off from his drowsiness. He pulls the blanket up to his chest and surrenders to sleep, completely ignoring the slightly different feel of the mattress and the all too familiar scent of his roommate surrounding him.

This is the last time, he warns himself as his heavy eyelids shut close. He refuses to humiliate himself any further.


End file.
